Part 32 (1/2)

”It happens to be the only way in which I can look upon the matter,”

was the cool reply.

”To proceed a little further,” the lawyer continued, ”I am here to enquire, solely in your own interests and as a matter of business, whether you have made any definite agreement to pay for these shares?

I am under the impression that your lords.h.i.+p mentioned a note of hand.”

”I have signed,” the Marquis acknowledged, ”a bill, I believe the doc.u.ment was called, for forty thousand pounds, due in about two months' time.”

”Has your lords.h.i.+p any idea as to how this liability is to be met?”

”None at all. It is possible that the shares will have advanced in value sufficiently to justify my selling them. If not, I take it that the bank will advance the sum against the scrip.”

Mr. Wadham, Junior, could scarcely contain himself.

”Does your lords.h.i.+p know,” he exclaimed, ”that the bank hesitated about advancing a sum of less than a thousand pounds upon the security of those shares?”

The Marquis yawned.

”They will probably have changed their minds in two months' time,” he remarked.

”But if they have not?” Mr. Wadham persisted.

”It is the unfortunate proclivity of you who are immersed in the narrow ways of legal procedure,” his client observed, ”to look only upon the worst side of a matter. Personally, I am an optimist. I rather expect to make a fortune on those shares.”

”It is the belief of my firm, on the contrary,” Mr. Wadham confessed gloomily, ”that they will end in a pet.i.tion in bankruptcy being presented against your lords.h.i.+p.”

The Marquis shook out his handkerchief, wiped his lips and lit a cigarette.

”Yours appears to be rather a dismal errand, Mr. Wadham,” he said coldly. ”Is there any reason why I should detain you further?”

”None whatever, so long as I have made it quite clear that there is no prospect of raising a single half-penny in excess of the mortgages already completed. The matter of the forty thousand pounds draft is, of course, entirely in your lords.h.i.+p's hands. I thought it my duty to inform you as to the value of the shares, in case you were able to persuade the gentleman who sold them to you to cancel the transaction.”

”You mean well, Wadham, no doubt,” the Marquis declared, a little patronisingly, ”but, as I said before, your turn of mind is too legal.

My respects to your father. You will forgive my ringing, will you not?

Lady Let.i.tia is waiting for me to walk with her.”

Mr. Wadham departed, saying blasphemous things all the way into Piccadilly, and the Marquis walked with Lady Let.i.tia in the Park. As a rule their conversation, although mostly of personal matters, was conducted in light-hearted fas.h.i.+on enough by Let.i.tia, and responded to with a certain dry though stately humour by her father. This morning, however, a silence which amounted almost to constraint reigned between them. The Marquis, realising this, finally dragged his thoughts with difficulty away from his own affairs.

”I had intended to speak to you, Let.i.tia,” he began, ”concerning the announcement of your marriage. Some festivities must naturally follow, and a meeting between myself and the Duke.”

”Whom you hate like poison, don't you, dad!” Let.i.tia said, with a little grimace. ”Well, so do I, for the matter of that.”

”One's personal feelings are scarcely of account in such a case,” the Marquis averred; ”that is to say, any personal feelings with the exception of yours and Grantham's. The match is suitable in every way, and at a time when every young man of account is being chased by a new race of ineligible young women, it must be a comfort to his family to contemplate an alliance like this.”

Let.i.tia shrugged her shoulders.

”With regard to the actual announcement, dad,” she said, ”we are going to keep it to ourselves for a few weeks longer, or at any rate until we are safely settled in the country. It's such a bore to have every one you have ever spoken to in your life come rus.h.i.+ng round to wish you happiness and that sort of thing. Charlie rather agrees with me.”

”The matter, naturally, is in your hands,” the Marquis replied, with a slight air of relief.